


Teaching is a Full-Time Job (Sometimes)

by Syksy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-20 02:45:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17613941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syksy/pseuds/Syksy
Summary: Sigil had been a witch's cat all her life. Or that was how the humans would have liked to phrase it, and she did not see the point of correcting them all the time, but of course the truth of it was that she'dhadwitches all her life.





	Teaching is a Full-Time Job (Sometimes)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [facethestrange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/facethestrange/gifts).



> A big thank you to Prinzenhasserin for the beta!

Sigil had been a witch's cat all her life. Or that was how the humans would have liked to phrase it, and she did not see the point of correcting them all the time, but of course the truth of it was that she'd _had_ witches all her life. They came with the cottage, apparently, and she rather liked the cottage. And humans had their uses, now and then. They were in possession of thumbs, for one thing.

When the witch had first come to Sigil's cottage it had taken the two of them a little bit of time to adjust. Well, the human, mostly. She had had all these ideas about their relationship that Sigil had had to firmly but gently redefine.

The ownership of the cottage had been one. Another important one had been the rules of engagement. Specifically, when to engage in petting Sigil. That was a work in progress still, but they'd definitely made great strides in correcting the situation. And then there was Sigil's role in their magic workings. For some unfathomable reason the witch had thought that she would say jump, and the cat would jump. Thankfully it had not taken too long to disabuse her of that notion. Once Sigil decided that enough time had passed for her to grant forgiveness and deign to speak again, she was a little surprised to find the girl to actually be pleasant company. Eager to learn, mostly quiet, full of raw talent and honestly grateful for Sigil's help. Not too bad at scratching under one's chin, either.

So Sigil had yawned, stretched, and decided to help her get the hang of it. This girl was already miles better than the previous one, and it would be such a bother to school yet another human in the proper ways of living with a cat, if this one also got send back to school.

It wasn't working very well.

“Aaaaand here she goes again”, Sigil said to herself. In Cat, so that the witch wouldn't understand. She seemed to be too busy to hear anyway, but it never hurt to be careful. Humans had such fragile egos sometimes, and the girl really was trying.

Sigil was sitting on top of the bookcase, squeezed comfortably between a pile of parchment and a skull of some creature that might have been a dragon, but quite possibly was just a raven with glued on teeth. From this vantage point, it was very apparent to her what had gone wrong this time. The witch was attempting a potion to cure warts, bog-standard fare, but she'd stirred it clockwise instead of the correct direction. Black smoke was already rising from the boiling liquid, and soon it would start to stink. It was too late to salvage the thing, and anyway, she had been told quite firmly to keep her paws to herself this time. So she just scratched behind her ear and settled down to wait for the inevitable tears.

It didn't take long for the witch to come to the same conclusion. “Sigil,” she said, her voice soft and sort of fragile. The cat jumped down straight away and bumped her head against the silly creature’s legs. “I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier,” the witch said, bending down to pet Sigil, “I just really wanted to get it right by myself. This time.” And then came the waterworks. So predictable, the cat thought, but didn't say. Instead, she just purred and let the human get it out of her system.

Next morning the witch was up at first light. “Let's go,” she said, and grabbed Sigil from the foot of the bed. “We have so much to do today, and the weather is just lovely.” She already had her shoes on and a basket in the hand that was not currently dangling a cat.

“What exactly are we going to do?” Sigil asked, squirming to get free of the undignified position. “Well, gather herbs of course!” the witch proclaimed, thankfully letting her captive go. “We need a lot of fresh ones to get going on all my assignments.”

Sigil looked up at the human. “You do remember that you can't collect most things at just any time of the month you please? They did teach you that, didn't they?” she asked, voice going almost pleading towards the end.

The witch scoffed. “Of course I do. We won't be picking anything where it matters _that_ much.”

There's no point in going into detail on how that had turned out. Sigil was just happy that the whole cottage had not burned down, and that the demon had left as soon as it realized there was nothing interesting to snack on.

Afterwards the witch did mostly listen when Sigil warned her about something. The problem was that she had a talent for finding new ways to mess up that no one sensible could possibly predict in advance.

The witch's teachers rarely came to the cottage. Sigil was fine with this, she didn't think much of them or their methods. How they could let the girl loose in the world without even a basic understanding of the principles of synchronicity, never mind anything more advanced, was beyond her. It was simply reckless. And caused her so much work. She couldn't remember the last afternoon when she'd had a full, uninterrupted nap. It was criminal, really.

Now they were here though, both of them. The distracted one with the silly glasses and undeniably interesting beard and the loud one with her robes so full of occult symbols that they could barely be called black anymore. The witch looked a little desperate, caught in the middle of their heated argument. Something about hemlock and toadstools, apparently. Well, no one had asked Sigil's opinion on the matter, so she might as well go out and see if there were any nice spots in the sun, far enough from the noise to make dozing off a possibility.

Just after Sigil had slid through the door she heard the shrill voice of the loud one calling her name. Apparently, she was needed for some silly experiment. Oh well. Too bad she was already out of earshot...

The cat did eventually feel sort of bad about leaving the witch alone at their mercy. Those two would have been hard for anyone to stand up against, never mind someone who still looked up at the idiots. So when the human asked for her help after they'd left, sounding slightly desperate, she agreed without a question. Being green for the next week seemed like an excessive punishment to Sigil, but at least she got the satisfaction of accepting multiple heartfelt apologies extremely gracefully.

So the witch listened to warnings and answered questions and never made the same mistake twice. That would have been more of an achievement if she hadn't endlessly stumbled upon new ones. But Sigil soldiered on, determined to succeed. She purred (very sparingly) and scolded and occasionally sprinted out in a huff.

Sometimes the witch would get these cleaning spells. And of course she really meant actual spells. No old fashioned broomwork for her, oh no, she was above such things. Sigil tried to escape these as best she could and return to pick up the pieces later. Sometimes she failed. Well, actually, most times she failed.

“No,” she yelled, seeing the witch raise her wand. “You forgot the second clause!” But it was already too late, of course. The gesture was made and the only thing they could do, either of them, was to hit the books and try to figure out how to stop an endlessly filling bucket of water from flooding half the countryside. Or locate a spell for growing gills, she supposed, but Sigil really did not fancy going aquatic.

To her credit, it was actually the witch who found the solution. Not that it was perfect, but it worked. They now had a lovely new fountain in their yard and some (hopefully, no, almost certainly) uninhabited dimension was slowly turning into an aquarium.

Sigil guessed that could be called progress, in some sense. The witch was getting better at cleaning up her own messes, which at least meant a little less work for her. Maybe it was time to try something a little more complicated, give the human a chance to prove she could commit.

They had been working on this spell for a week. Sigil had painstakingly corrected all the wrong angles in the runes the witch had drawn on the floor. She had suffered through more incense smoke than any feline could be expected to tolerate, just so that the witch could meditate enough to feel confident in her concentration. She had even allowed the removal of a tuft of her fur, to ensure that the brush used to draw the symbols was genuine black cat hair, and not rabbit or even goat. (The shopkeeper in town claimed to only sell “the finest magical wares, carefully selected”, but Sigil had a working nose, thank you very much, and those bristles had definitely smelled like prey.)

So when the moon began to rise the witch began her preparations. The timing was almost perfect, she only had to rush a little bit at the end to finish her incantation just at the moment it reached its zenith.

The runes glowed a promising purple. A darkness began to gather in the middle of the circle. An unearthly hum could be heard.

“I did it!” cried the witch. Sigil shot a horrified glare at her and hissed. The human had the wit to be mortified at least, slamming both hands over her mouth before once more fixing her wide-eyed gaze on the circle.

The darkness wavered. Its edges gained a slight pink tinge. There was a scent of something strange in the air. Cupcakes, Sigil realized. It smelled like cupcakes.

“Concentrate, think of your meditations,” Sigil whispered and followed her own advice. Well, except for the meditation part. Remembering those would definitely not help. So she just shut it all out: all the worry, all the work, even the sweet vanilla smell of something baking.

Sigil couldn't have said how long it took. At some point, she just knew it was all right to open her eyes. And there, in the circle, at its proper place, there it was. Just a tiny thing, but actually, almost exactly, what they had meant to conjure. The witch looked so relieved that Sigil was afraid she was going to start crying, again. The girl had done well though, she had to admit it to herself. There was a strange warmth gathering somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach. Maybe if she was human, she too might have… but no. She twitched her tail to banish the idiotic thought and cleared her throat. “What are you waiting for exactly, a gilded invitation? Ask your question, before it gets bored and goes back where it came from.”

The witch beamed at Sigil and she had to tamp down on that weird warm sensation again. She flicked her tail towards the circle pointedly and while the human finally got on with her inquiry, the cat mused that she might give her the day off tomorrow, as a reward. They appeared to be finally getting somewhere, after all, and it was always good to rest well before new challenges.


End file.
